WOW, where has the time gone? Day to day on the bus is pretty much the same. Pick kids up, take to school… pick up at school and drive home. The wheels on the bus go round and round, yadda yadda yadda!
Ok, so here’s the deal. We just had a 2 week “fall break” which was awesome for all of us in the district. I was glad that it worked out this way, I stated a new route on Monday, our first day back. More on this later.

Let me tell you about the big bus when I left it.
The High School kids really haven’t changed much. Still pretty full of themselves, and of course they know everything. One junior girl sits in the passenger side front seat on the way to school every day and does her best job of backseat driving. Telling me things like “You should just hit that car”, “Why did you slow down for that guy riding the bike?”, “I wouldn’t wait for him to get to the bus, leave without him” and more things along those lines. Good thing this person does not have her drivers license yet, cuz when she gets it… I’m staying away from that school!
The Middle School kids have turned out to be a huge problem for me. I drive these kids from my own neighborhood, so I know several of them. They took away my first 2 stops, to lighten the load a bit, then gave me one of the stops back. Good thing that only had 5 students, and the huge bus stop has 65 so when everyone shows up, bus full at 70 kids. Been averaging about 65, so 5 from the big stop are not riding. The issue comes from one student in general. The families do not get along, mine and his and his dad is taking full advantage of that problem. So if his son feels in the least bit slighted, he calls into management and complains about me. Some times I didn’t even know there was a problem until I got back to the lot. So how can I fix something if I don’t know it’s broke? So basically, this dad was running my bus, too bad the jerk does not have a CDL to drive a school bus. (Wonder how he would like to keep control of 65-68 students while driving whit his back to them? Oh and you can’t hit or yell at them either) Course he couldn’t pass the driving test, mainly because he has NO POINTS left on his license, and then again, he would NEVER pass the random drug tests we have to take. So suffice it to say, he’s a jerk, and his kid is a jerk in training. I just didn’t like always being second guessed, being wrong when I did nothing and generally having no control over anything on that bus load of students. the topper was this. I had a girl on the bus that was spitting on everyone as well as out the bus window at passing cars! YUCK, I told her to knock it off, and then told the other 2 girls in her seat that she was not to be allowed to sit next to the window ever again. Problem solved. Well she was mad at me, because of this, she was complaining at the bus stop and this jerk in training told her to have her parents call and complain about me to the district transportation people, it would get me in trouble, AND she could then sit next to the window again. Because the transportation people will always take the parents side over the bus driver. Does the kid tell her parents that the reason she has to sit in the aisle position is because she is spitting out the window? Hell no, so the parents think I am just picking on the kid. So the bus people do to, then when I tell management WHY this kid is sitting on the aisle they go… “Oh we didn’t know! ” Well no shit Sherlock! Here’s a clue, let me drive my own darn bus and keep your nose outta bus business. If I need your help I’ll ask for it!
The little kids are a whole different group of problems, they just NEVER want to sit down, if your are between the ages of 5 and 10, it’s your job to STAND all the way to school! So once again, I am announcing to the bus to please sit down. I have no place to pull the bus over to enforce that rule, I have to wait till i get to the school and then get all up in their grill about it. UGH. Now I remember why I quit driving in the first place.
Which brings me to my current situation. The second to last day before fall break, management told me they were trading buses with me. Taking away bus 21 (which drives like a dream for a school bus and is only 3 years old) and giving me bus 66. This bus is OLD, has had 4 radiators put in it since August, and drives like a tank! No that’s being mean to tanks, it drives worse than that, you can barely turn a corner without ripping your shoulder out in the process. Well I really did not want to trade buses, but had no choice in the matter. Now add bus problems to student management problems and it was just too much for me. So I traded routes. I now drive a small bus, like I did last year. But I should be so lucky to have a good bus like last year. I have the oldest bus in the fleet, well there are 3 of them the same age. 1 is retired the other is still online, but never used and then there is my bus. Good old bus 539. This bus is the worst thing to drive. Yes, I did know this was going to be the bus I was going to have when i took the new route. But better to know you are driving a POS than to wonder when your bus will fall apart. Now the biggest problem with this bus is the brake peddle. The bus can’t stay at 55 MPH to save its life. It has no get up and go, as a matter of fact, it won’t even get up and think about it, it just say’s hell no! But I bid on this route knowing that. The bus stinks!!! The engine in inside right next to the drivers seat, it is covered, but that’s about it, I get diesel fumes up by me all the time. No more fresh air, and I always have a headache when I get off the bus. Did I mention the soar throat as well. Wonder if its related? I knew about this too! The bus handles really bad, to put it mildly, it’s a beast to turn and that’s not the worst part. I knew all this before I bid on the route. It’s the brake peddle that about kills me, the rest of it is just a pain, but this brakeing issue is painful. The seat can not go back any further, I need about 2 more inches. The brake peddle is ABOVE the gas peddle, so you have to about jerk your knee up to your chin to hit the break peddle, hence it throws your hip totally out every time you have to break. Forget it on icy roads, where you foot sort of hovers over the break peddle, there is no hovering! Not without crying in pain. I have to press my hands into the steering wheel, arms straight out and locked to shove my body as far back into the seat back so that I can get my foot up to the brake peddle just so it can hover there when I am in traffic. I honestly think if I could get 2 more inches in lenght for the brake peddle it would be better. Or they can give me bus 523 which is not being used, and is the bus I drove last year. Go figure.
I was thinking maybe that this braking thing could be a safety issue. Hummmm, maybe I will talk to my team leader about this issue.
So I guess I will have more to talk about now, all my aches and pains driving this bus. Oh I didn’t say, I have 2 students, one to the high school one to the middle school. Only one kid on the bas at a time. I died and went to heaven! (Lord I hope bus 539 won’t be there with me)